USATF.TV Launches With Live Webcast of National Championships

USA Track & Field will launch its branded Internet broadcast outlet, USATF.TV[4], today, starting with coverage of the national junior championships that are being held in conjunction with the open national championships in Des Moines, Iowa.

The free webcasts will provide live coverage of 50 hours of competition in Des Moines. For distance-running fans, an immediate highlight will be live coverage of the men's and women's 10,000-meter races on Thursday night.

The USATF championships, to be held June 20-23, will select the U.S. teams for the world championships, which will be held in Moscow in August.

“This weekend is just the start of our aggressive digital media strategy, which will build throughout the summer and into 2014,” said USATF CEO Max Siegel. “Fans will find more and more sophisticated event coverage, as well as a range of creative programming and behind-the-scenes footage as we continue to develop USATF.TV.”

The sample screenshot seen above, which was provided by USATF to Runner's World Newswire, indicates that Runnerspace.com will host the webcasts. Runnerspace already produces webcasts of most of USATF's national road racing championships.

"The website will host non-live events after they have aired (i.e., you can go back and watch the 10,000 on Friday)," Katie Branham, USATF's marketing and communication manager, told Newswire. "It will also be the home to other original programing and will grow over the coming weeks."

The webcast will use in-stadium and, at times, TV broadcast cameras, and will have announcers, Branham said. It's unclear at this time whether the webcast will have integrated timing.

During the portions of the national championships that will be broadcast on TV, the webcast will show field events.

The webcast and TV schedules for the junior and national championships are below.